Brussels, 14/09/2012 (Agence Europe) - The legitimacy of the new Ukrainian parliament will depend on whether elections take place correctly on 28 October, European Commissioner Stefan Füle and Sweden's Foreign Minister Carl Bildt said in Yalta, southern Ukraine, on Friday 14 September, as reported by AFP.
In a written statement signed also by Elmar Brok, MEP, after having met President Viktor Yanukovich on the sidelines of a Yalta European Strategy (YES) conference, Füle and Bildt said the legitimacy of the new parliament will depend on the process of elections that must be free and fair and in line with high international standards. European officials regretted it was impossible for imprisoned opponents to the regime, Yulia Timoshenko, the former prime minister, and Yuri Lutsenko, the former minister of the interior, to take part in the vote. Both affairs arouse considerable criticism in the West which believes they have been imprisoned for politically-motivated reasons.
The trials of these two well-known Ukrainian figures sentenced to imprisonment for abuse of power did not comply with international standards for fair, transparent and independent legal proceedings, the Europeans state in their message, distributed by Füle's press service. The problem of selective justice must be tackled before moving forward towards the signing of a major association agreement between Ukraine and the EU, they stressed. They finally underlined the importance of media freedom, while an opposition television channel, TVi, accuses the Ukrainian regime of seeking to destroy it. (LC/transl.jl)